eucatastrophe n. eucatastrophic [ < Gr. eu, "good" and catastrophe Coined by JRR Tolkien.] 1. (in a narrative) The event that shifts the balance in favor of the protagonist when all seems lost. 2. A happy ending.

05/28/2017

Connor O’Mally is a twelve year old boy having to deal with a lot of emotional stress. He is the son of a single mom whose dad lives in America and has a new family. His grandmother is ever so much colder and less motherly than his mother who is dying of cancer. Meanwhile, he is being bullied at school and unable to obtain protection from its adults. End result, a firestorm of emotions that are not being expressed. Or that are being neutralized by other equally powerful counter emotions.

Enter a gnarly old Yew tree with a counseling degree to help him sort himself out. By the time the film is over (no plot spoilers) Connor is able to acknowledge that it is possible to have two opposing emotions; that sometimes emotions need to be given an outlet or they become dangerous; that putting one’s feelings out on the table to be addressed is healthy; and that emotional responses should sometimes be delayed because they can be based on conjectured realities instead of actual.He also learns that sometimes those who love us know how we are feeling even if we cannot say it and that when that happens, it is a total gift.

One assumes that the monster that is calling in this move looks like a tree but is actually an externalized imaginative symbol for what is going on inside.

A good movie for talking with kids about their emotional lives I should think.

Question for Comment: How would you determine your emotional IQ? That is, how good are you at acknowledging, processing, controlling, and expressing emotions in ways that benefit you?

“My fundamental principle would be that we are to be saved by our good works , which are within out power, and not by our faith, which is not in our power.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Each person’s fate,” according to Jefferson, “would be decided by whether their life benefitted humanity, not whether they believed in a divine Christ.” And yet, no region of the country is less inclined to follow Jefferson’s lead on this than the South today. How did that happen?

It is interesting to consider the process by which Evangelical Protestantism moved from the burned over districts of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York to the Southern States. Heyrman outlines several causes in the course of her book. She notes that Evangelicalism had to contend with the more rationalist Congregational and Unitarian churches in the North while, in the South, the primary establishment religion (Anglicanism) had been virtually removed by the Revolutionary War. That is, the evangelicals were able to move into a vacuum with weak conservative influence..

She also notes that the evangelical movement intentionally benefitted from a variety of factors in the Southern culture. It appealed to those more comfortable with youthful emotion and unregulated superstition. Methodist and Baptist preachers were far more likely to be itinerants and willing to work for “Peace Corps wages.” Perhaps they were able to articulate a message that that required people to become better people while defining “better” in ways that actually advantaged them – gave them freedom to express their feelings, maintain slaves, and structure their gender relationships to their liking.

I finished the book with the impression that I had been given access to a massive amount of cultural exposure to this place and time in American history but ultimately, the records seemed to be so diverse they leave one a little confused about the argument though they are much better informed of the evidence.

Question for Comment: Would you like to live in a part of the country that was more religious or less? Why?

05/20/2017

It’s been over hundred and fifty years since Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick and thus, I doubt I am going to say anything about it that has not been said before, but nevertheless, that never seems to stop me from trying. On the surface (no pun intended) it seems to be a book about a whale. Sounding it a little deeper, it seems to be a book about philosophy and about how one ought to live. One could use Moby Dick to explore any number of philosophical questions but my two favorites will probably be about epistemology and how to live a worthy life. What is knowable? What is not? What is worth knowing? What is not? What does it mean to live as a free man? Let’s start with the former questions first. Here are a few assertions that Melville makes about knowledge that I think are carried throughout the novel.

First, Melville makes the rather transcendentalist assertion that the person who knows himself, no matter who he is, is worth knowing (I would apply this to women too though Moby Dick is a book almost entirely about men). The narrator of the book starts the first paragraph with an implied assertion that his story is something that you will want to hear and that he is a person you will want to converse with. “Call me Ishmael,” he says. He is not going to ask you if you want to hear his story. He actually is going to assume that you are going to want a relationship with him. There are a ton of assertions packed into that one sentence. Ishmael is about to talk to you for about 24 straight hours (how long it took me to listen to the book in the car on my commutes). He is going to tell you about what he does, about why he does it, about the people he does it with, about his intellectual obsession (whales), and about a gazillion other things that you never asked to know. His novel, Like Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself is a bold assertion of his own importance even though he might seem like a “shabby” nobody on the outside. Like Ahab, his central character, he demands to be attended to.

Ishamael, as you may well recall from your knowledge of the Bible was the “unchosen” son of Abraham. He was, according to Genesis, the son that was banished – cast out – abandoned. Clearly, Ishmael’s descendants do not see it that way and ironically, neither does Ishmael in Moby Dick. Ishmael is defiant. He does not intend to go quietly into the night and accept the status that is given him as a lowly whaleman. He is not going to let you ignore him or underestimate him. He is fine with being a low paid wage-worker on a whaling ship, indeed, for personal reasons, he chooses that as his life when clearly, he could probably teach philosophy, literature, or science at a university somewhere. He likes the freedom of whaling however, and thus follows his transcendentalist heart in the matter, but he does not accept that he is irrelevant or that he knows nothing worth knowing. He only seems to be irrelevant on the outside. Ishmael, and we suspect Melville, believes in what he calls “democratic dignity” “shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike” radiating with divine equality “without end from the great God absolute!”

Ishmael (speaking for Melville I imagine) asks you as a reader not to dismiss him because he has no pedigree and no Ph.D. or tenure track. “If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways,” he says,

“I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just spirit of equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war- horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!”

Which leads me to the second assertion that Melville makes about knowledge.

In Moby Dick, Melville makes the argument that knowledge and wisdom are not the sole property of the privileged classes. Not only does the outcast laborer deserve attention, what he is capable of knowing is unlimited. Beware all you who would put “No Trespassing” signs on the University library. Ishmael may look on the outside like a migrant laborer in a low paying job but, his intellectual storehouse has a Harvard and Yale in it. It would be impossible for me, on one reading, to list everything that Ishmael knows about. He has clearly read deeply in classical literature. He has an extensive knowledge of theology (many different theologies, actually). He can quote poetry. He knows his Bible inside and out. He is constantly making references to history, botany, zoology, anatomy, philosophy, astronomy, astrology, phrenology, biology, archeology, geography, anthropology, Autecology (the study of the ecology of an individual species), craniology (study of skulls), ecology, osteology (study of bones), paleobiology (study of prehistoric animals), and typology (the study of classification systems) among other things. Clearly, his “major” is in cetology (the study of whales and dolphins) but Ishmael is a polymath Renaissance auto-didact who just assumes that everyone has an encyclopedia in their brains like he does. When he wants to explain something about anything, he reaches into the pantry of his extensive memory of past experiences and readings, and pulls out one metaphor after another that he expects you to be familiar with.

In Ishmael’s world, there is no caste system that can be used to keep “the lowly” from what the well-born only need to know. He defies being “put in his place.” “I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote,” he says of his curiosity, “I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” And as for his education? “A whaleship was my Yale and Harvard.”

Thirdly, Moby Dick is a defiant assertion that people should not be forced to “know” or believe what cannot be known. Ishmael refuses to be told what, of all he knows, he must believe – be it knowledge of whales or God. Ishmael is as comfortable telling the world that he will not believe what has not been proven to him as he feels comfortable insisting that he will know far more than what his society considers worth teaching him. Thus, Ishmael insists on keeping an open and agnostic mind in the face of religious proselytization. Neither the Quaker beliefs of his boat’s owners, nor the traditional beliefs of his county's “national religion” intimidate him. He is as perfectly willing to let them alone in their religious beliefs as he is to let his best friend Queequeg be a pagan. If Queequeg wants to worship a wooden idol, that is fine with Ishmael. If the Quakers who own The Pequod want to worship God in their unique way as they see God, that is fine with Ishmael too. He refuses to kowtow to any Shibboleth.

Ishmael is a man who cares about accuracy more than anything and where he sees inaccuracy or unsupported knowledge, he exposes it and where he knows that there is no way to objectively know something, he does not insist on any view but the toleration of all views. He will not be dictated to by theologians or scientists on matters of personal conviction. He will not excommunicate an honest man for being a pagan. “A man can be honest in any sort of skin,” he insists in contradiction to his culture. And neither will a man’s religion be a hindrance to his affection so long as his character is honest.

“What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself - the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

“With much interest, I sat watching [Queequeg the cannibal]. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face - at least to my taste - his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.” [these are admirable attributes to the freedom loving Ishmael]

For Ishmael, Queequeg’s fundamental character is sufficient proof of his divine acceptability.

“I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo [queequeg’s idol’s name] and his Ramadan; - but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”

For Ishmael, there is no cause to argue religion with anyone unless, out of love, you want to save them from what the religion is doing to them to make them suffer needlessly here and now.

“Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him."

And just so I now did with Queequeg.”

Melville was no missionary. And if he ever was a missionary, he would be a missionary of Unitarianism to evangelicals. As he insists to his Quaker owners who want all their sailors to be Christians, Queequeg is as “Christian” as anyone need be.

“Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. ‘I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands.’"

What is true of religion, is true of whales. Ishmael is interested in anyone willing to write about the subject but, where they differ from his experience, he relies on his experience, and where he has no experience, he relies on those who write from experience. Here he is, speaking of all those who have gone before him and tried to capture the essence of the sperm whale that he is so fascinated by:

“Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters." "Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea." "A field strewn with thorns." "All these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists."

“Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few: - The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts will show.

Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer and whaleman.”

“. . . As yet, however, the Sperm Whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life.”

Where neither his own experience or someone else’s can be appealed to, Ishmael contents himself with creating the cupboards for future discoveries to be put into. “I promise nothing complete” he says,

“because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.”

“I am the architect, not the builder.”

“But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught - nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”

Fearlessly, courageously, honestly, what Ishmael has to say about whales is probably what Melville would say about God.

“Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.”

What does all this mean for the way that Ishmael lives his life?

First, it means that he admittedly is not the best fit for the job that pays his room and board. When he goes up in the rigging to watch for whales, he confesses to being distracted with thoughts on more abstract subjects. “Let me make a clean breast of it here,” he states,

“and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I - being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude, - how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time."

“And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer.”

Secondly, both Melville and Ishmael seem to see the need to live life heroically, bravely, and assertively. There are basically three heroes in the book: Ishmael, Ahab, and the white whale, Moby Dick. And all three are defiant in their own way. Ishmael will not submit himself to the external control of his mind. Ahab will not suffer amputation with impunity. And Moby Dick will not simply offer himself up to be sliced and boiled into sperm oil.

“The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!”

Ishmael’s whole dictum can be summed up by Emmanuel Kant in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” Sapere Aude [Dare to know!]

“For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself … [my italics]”

For Ishmael, life cannot be lived passively being told what to think. It must be lived actively deciding what you are going to think. In matters of science or theology, one has to take risks to know anything.

“How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. no. only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.”

In conclusion, it is clear that the whale, Moby Dick, is a symbol of something but it may well be that it is a different thing to different people. If Moby Dick is a symbol of God or fate, then it is interesting to compare the approaches represented by Ishmael and Ahab. Both are somewhat willing to transfer the attributes of God to the whale but Ahab has thereby gone to war with it after doing so. “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale,” Ahab shouts at the great Leviathan,

“to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"

Ishmael merely wants to understand the whale and explain it. His war with God is not a personal one. And thus, it almost seems, the whale lets him live to tell the tale. An epic tale about “a fish that got away.”

Question for Comment: It is interesting that Ishmael is willing to be a thrall occupationally but not intellectually or spiritually. Here is how he explains.

“What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about - however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way - either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.”

And yet he will not have his mind or soul told to tow any lines. How do you express defiance in your life? Or do you? In what ways have you refused to be used as a tool of someone else’s agenda and in what ways are you exactly that?